RIVKA’S WAY

Set in Bohemia in 1778, this story centers on Rivka Liebermann, a 15-year-old Jewish girl living in the Prague ghetto with her family. Her only desire is to go into the larger city and experience, if only for a few hours, life outside the walls of the Jewish quarter. She manages to escape by wearing her brothers’ clothing, spends the day wandering around and even working, digging potatoes in that alien place where Jews are the enemy. She leaves on two more occasions, to help a young Christian boy who helped her. Unfortunately, characters are cardboard, described rather than created as real people, making it impossible for a reader to identify with the protagonist. Settings lack strong pictorialization and Rivka’s “adventures” are not very adventurous and may strike some readers as foolhardy. That she manages to pass as a young male is a weak notion since she is described as flirtatiously feminine. The writing is stiff and plain, almost as though the author had a list of topics or descriptions she wanted to include and an agenda to meet. Simple sentence after simple sentence gives a numbing effect that further dooms the potential appeal. (Fiction. 9-11)